BIG Cat From Bengals to Bengals, Marvin Lewis Continues to Make his Mark
• Molecular Research Core Facility Running Strong • Alumna’s Journey from Journalist to Nurse • Helping Out in Africa Volume 43 | Number 1 | Fall 2012
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Fall 2012
www.isu.edu
Sparking Another Year for Renewal and Engagement
921 South 8th Ave., Stop 8265 Pocatello, Idaho 83209-8265 (208) 282-3620 Arthur C. Vailas, Ph.D. University President Kent M. Tingey, D.A. ’97 Vice President, University Advancement Mark Levine levimark@isu.edu Director, Marketing and Communications K.C. Felt feltkc@isu.edu Director, Alumni Relations Idaho State University Magazine welcomes letters, comments and story ideas. Direct them to the postal address below, or send an e-mail to franemil@isu.edu. Idaho State University Magazine staff Editor Emily Frandsen Contributors Chris Gabettas Mark Levine Jaime Schroeder Andrew Taylor Casey Thompson - ’86, ’12 Designer Joey Gifford - ’03 Photo Services Susan Duncan - ’95 Bethany Baker Office of Alumni Relations Idaho State University 921 S. 8th Avenue, Stop 8033 Pocatello, Idaho 83209-8033 (208) 282-3755 or (800) 933-4781 or e-mail: alumni@isu.edu
Freelance journalists are encouraged to submit queries for topical stories with an Idaho State University connection. Please send queries by email to Emily Frandsen at franemil@isu.edu, or call (208) 282-3164.
Postmaster
ISU Magazine is published twice a year by the Office of Marketing and Communications at Idaho State University. Send address changes to the Office of Alumni Relations at 921 S. 8th Ave., Stop 8033, Pocatello, ID 83209-8033 or send an e-mail to alumni@isu.edu.
President Arthur Vailas
As another hot Idaho summer slowly gives way to the picturesque colors of autumn, changes also abound across the Idaho State University campus. There is definitely excitement in the air as a new academic year begins. One of my favorite parts of the season is welcoming our returning students, faculty and staff, and, especially, our new students to campus. Some of you probably remember when you first walked through the Swanson Arch to begin your educational experience as well. When they finish their journey, as you did, they will walk through the arch again, brimming with confidence and ready to tackle the problems and complexities facing all of us. Our faculty members continue to be engaged and ready to educate and train another generation of leaders. Many of them have spent their summers out in the field and in the laboratory, making new discoveries. We are a recognized world leader in our global research endeavors with collaborative agreements with 172 entities nationally and worldwide, including the Idaho National Laboratory, Center for Advanced Energy Studies and Bannock Development Corporation. As you will read on page 8, Idaho State University researchers played a critical role in the landing of NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars in August. Professor Mike Smith of the Idaho Accelerator Center designed the portable linear accelerators that the Idaho National Laboratory used to check the integrity of the welds on Curiosity’s nuclear power supply. We have been making great discoveries at Idaho State University, and we are ready and excited for the new semester, with a new generation of future leaders. I welcome all of you to come and visit Idaho State University, to share wonderful memories and see the wonderful transformations happening today. Arthur C. Vailas, Ph.D. President, Idaho State University
Check Out ISU Magazine On The Go You know the drill. Grab your mobile phone and take a picture of the QR code to visit the online edition of Idaho State University Magazine. CORRECTION: A photo of Laura and Chad Bainbridge on page 27 of the Spring 2012 issue of Idaho State University magazine was attributed incorrectly. The photo was taken by Tom Hamilton. ISU Magazine regrets the error.
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A message from President Arthur C. Vailas
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College of Engineering dean honored by his alma mater ISU goes smoke free
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Bruce Finney works on a mapping system to help predict future weather patterns ISU campus ranked fifth safest campus
ISU’s part in the Mars mission Kids visit campus for annual science festival
ESTEC awarded scholarship funding
Bengal Fashion Show: Students inside Holt
Arena wait for the first Bengal Fashion Show to begin.
ISU Photographic Services/Bethany Baker
On The Cover: Cincinnati Bengals head coach and ISU alumnus Marvin Lewis to be honored with the ISU Distinguished Alumnus Award at Homecoming 2012. Photo courtesy of the Cincinnati Bengals.
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Center for Archaeology, Materials, and Applied Science sheds light on history with scanning electron microscope State of Idaho is presented with a method utilized in the College of Education Idaho Museum of Natural History gains a prestigious partner Molecular Research Core Facility helps progress campus research, makes strong discoveries ISU responds to need with speech-language-pathology programs Alumna makes the decision to move from journalism to nursing
Find more stories and news at www.isu.edu/magazine
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ISU to offer first nursing doctoral program
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Recent graduate went from ninth-grade dropout to Outstanding Student Award winner
ISU soccer player honors a life of serving alongside her mom with charity work in Africa
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Why I Teach
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ISU has a basketball connection on the East Coast
ISU-Meridian helps improve life in East African orphanage Cover story: Once a Bengal, always a Bengal. Alumnus Marvin Lewis to be honored at Homecoming Helping the ISU campus air stay clean ‌ using cooking oil Chamber Choir makes memorable tour in Europe
Wheatley family embodies a spirit of giving
Homecoming 2012: Traditions Old and New
Trackings
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Predicting Future Weather Patterns Idaho State University research scientist Bruce Finney’s ultimate goal is to help create accurate weather maps of the past for the American West that can be used to better predict future weather patterns. It is a complicated endeavor, as the results of his recent research suggests, and a work in progress that is becoming more sophisticated as Finney examines the ancient sediment layers in lakes in the Pacific Northwest. Finney, an ISU biological sciences and geosciences professor, participated in a study “1,500 year quantitative reconstruction of winter precipitation in the Pacific Northwest” that was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. That study has received wide publicity and attention because of its surprising results found by Finney and his colleagues at the University of Pittsburgh, Penn State and Ohio State. The researchers compared the data from the analysis of tree rings to that from lake sediments to see how they related. It turns out some periods of weather in the past were misidentified as being in drought. “Water is a big deal in the West so we’ve been trying to get a longer-term perspective on how often and long droughts
come and why they occur by analyzing lake sediments,” Finney said. “This paper focuses on the last 1,500 years. The lakes tell us more about what happened in the winter time, the trees tell us more about the summer.” Generally, in the short term the tree rings and sediment samples matched up, but in the long term they showed differences, showing that dry summers sometimes paired up with wet winters, or vice versa. This has caused scientists to Bruce Finney reinterpret past weather patterns: some periods that were identified as drought based on tree ring data are now classified differently because lake sediment data showed wetter than average winters during the same period. Drought is a common feature in the West’s weather history, with several in the last 1,500 years lasting decades, according to Finney. One of those periods of generally dry conditions in this region began about 500 years ago during the “Little Ice Age” ending about 1850. “The climate has been all over the
place in recent years,” Finney said, “with wet years followed by dry years, but we’re dryer than normal over the last dozen or so years.” The important part of this research is what it contributes to the big picture of the West’s climate. “We will now be able to compare these results to what we are determining happened in Idaho, Alaska and other places affected by weather patterns originating from the North Pacific Ocean over the same period,” Finney said. “We’re basically trying to put together maps to see what controlled wet and dry periods in the past to help know where the climate system is going in the future.” For his part in the study, Finney examined lake sediment core samples collected from Castor Lake, which is in northwestern Washington, with funding from the National Science Foundation, and is currently involved in similar studies in Idaho, Alaska and other regions surrounding the North Pacific Ocean.
Safe at Home
Again Idaho State University has been ranked one of the safest campuses in the nation, this time by Collegesafe, which touts ISU as the fifth safest campus in the nation. “This university of 15,000 located in small Pocatello, Idaho, is known as the smile capital of the world,” the website states. “It has to be a safe place then right? Idaho State is a perennial safe school that is on the list year after year.” Collegesafe broke down the top-10 safest colleges and universities with a minimum enrollment of 6,000 students. All of the colleges and universities on the list are residential campuses – the list does not include commuter campuses. “Our Public Safety staff is dedicated and works hard at keeping the campus safe and we live in a good community,” said Stephen Chatterton, ISU director of public safety. “The support and attitude toward campus safety displayed by our students, staff and faculty makes the difference in the quality of our campus atmosphere.” ISU has been ranked high in safety for several years, being rated the fifth safest campus in the nation in 2009 and the seventh safest in 2010 by The Daily Beast, a national news website. Collegesafe ranked the New York Institute of Technology the nation’s safest university. Regionally, the University of Montana was ranked sixth on the list.
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Penn State Honors Dean Imel George R. Imel, Dean of the College of Science and Engineering at Idaho State University, was honored as an Outstanding Engineering Alumnus in the Penn State College of Engineering this spring, the highest honor the college awards. “It’s certainly an honor to be recognized by one’s alma mater. There is no question that my education at Penn State gave me the tools to succeed in my career, which has now spanned many years and several continents,” Imel said. “I am proud to be a Nittany Lion, and very honored that the institution has recognized me.” After receiving a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering and political science from Lafayette College in Easton,
Going Smoke Free Idaho State University went smoke free Sept. 1, joining more than 800 other postsecondary institutions across the country as a Smoke Free Campus. The decision came after reviewing the survey results of faculty, staff and students who were asked about ISU’s role in regard to smoking and whether ISU should be smoke free. The survey, developed and conducted under the direction of Galen Louis, assistant professor and director of ISU’s Public Health Program, indicated that only 8.8 percent of ISU’s community smokes daily. Nearly 70 percent said that they thought “the University should see this as a health issue and support policies to maintain clean air environments for all university personnel.” In addition, 60.7 percent were in favor of ISU going completely smoke-free with 15.7 percent neutral and 1 percent with no opinion. The ISU survey also supports the findings of previous surveys conducted by the Bannock County Health Department. Smoking cessation workshops will be available through Student Health Services and the ISU Wellness Center. In addition, smoking cessation patches are covered by the Student Health Fee for students and by the University’s health insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Idaho. “I am pleased to have the opportunity to implement ASISU’s recommendation,” Vailas said. “As the higher education institution in Idaho that offers the largest number of programs in the health professions, this new policy is consistent with our focus on health and wellness.”
Pa., Imel pursued his master’s degree in nuclear engineering (1973) and his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering and physics, (1977) both from Penn State. Imel was a faculty member at Penn State from 1981 to 1983, during which time he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in reactor kinetics, reactor physics and neutron transport, and he also helped analyze the accident George Imel at Three Mile Island. Since then Imel has had a distinguished and varied career including stints at research laboratories— including Argonne National Laboratory,
Idaho National Laboratory and the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab—and working overseas, including for the Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique in Cadarache. He was also an original member and leader of the experimental program for multinational project Triga Accelerator Driven Experiment of ENEA (National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development) in Italy, where his assignments reflected the evolution of the nuclear industry at the time. In 2007, Imel returned to academia as professor and chair of Nuclear Engineering at Idaho State University, and last year he was named dean of the College of Science and Engineering.
LEADING
IDAHO Educating health professionals We offer more than 20 graduate and undergraduate programs in the health sciences and provide dental, counseling, and speech language services for underserved populations at our clinics.
Meridian Health Science Center (208) 373-1700 • www.isu.edu/meridian
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ISU Photographic Services/Susan Duncan
Heading to the Red Planet
The $2.5 billion Curiosity rover successfully landed on Mars on Aug. 6 and Idaho State University’s Mike Smith is confident about his part in powering the automobile-size craft that travelled more than 339 million miles to the Red Planet. “It’s exciting and I am glad the Idaho Accelerator Center is doing work that is in this realm,” said Smith, an engineering physicist with the ISU Idaho Accelerator Center. Smith designed the portable linear accelerators that the Idaho National Laboratory used to check the welds on the Curiosity’s nuclear power supply. Portable linear accelerators developed at the IAC were also used to check the welds on the spacecraft New Horizons, which was
launched in January 2006 and is expected to reach Pluto in July 2015. On such costly, important and demanding missions it is important that the welds hold on the metal cases used to encase the plutonium-238 that is used to power the rover. Curiosity uses as its power source a Multi-Mission Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator, which is a nuclear battery that uses the heat supplied by plutonium 238 to create electricity. “I follow the missions pretty closely because there is a lot riding on it,” Smith said. “It is exciting to watch and I like to see how it is going because the Idaho Accelerator Center has something invested in it.” The plutonium is encased in iridium, the most corrosion-resistant metal, to form
what is called a fueled clad. The welds on this fueled clad must be strong enough to not allow radioactivity material to leak and to ensure the MMRG has fuel. The IAC’s portable accelerators speed up electrons that travel near the speed of light. Those electrons are converted to high-energy photons or X-rays and are fired into the fueled clad, giving X-ray images. Those Xray images are used to confirm the integrity of the fueled clads. The Curiosity is the sixth NASA spacecraft to land on Mars. It travelled through space for more than eight months to reach its destination. The 1-ton Curiosity rover is designed to investigate whether Mars is, or ever was, capable of hosting microbial life.
SUPPORTING ISU AND TAMING YOUR HUNGER Chocolates, candy, nuts and 30 flavors of popcorn including the
BENGAL CRUNCH COLLECTION Open Monday-Saturday, 9 AM to 6 PM 421 East Oak in Pocatello www.pokypopcornshop.com (208) 233-4654
Fall 2012
ISU Photographic Services/Susan Duncan
Hey Kid, Wanna Be a Scientist? Come tweak a model airplane wing, fire a rocket or watch the “Gunfight at the Microbe Corral.” Or would you rather build your own catapult, watch electrons surfing on a microwave, or shoot a steel-ball accelerator that mimics the mechanics of nuclear accelerators? Come tickle a rubber boa or feed a cricket to a salamander. For the past two years Idaho State University has hosted and participated in the Idaho Science and Engineering Festival, and participated in the national USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C. The 2012 Idaho Science and Engineering Festival, the only one held in Idaho, was held at ISU in April and featured more than 22 hands-on learning booths presented by ISU faculty, staff and students in the Pond Student Union Ballroom. Contestants were also out on the Hutchinson Quadrangle participating in an egg toss contest and a catapult building contest. The event was capped off by ISU Physics Professor Steve Shropshire’s “Wonders of Physics” show in the ISU
Physical Science Building, which drew a large audience. Jean Pfau, associate professor of biological sciences, Caryn Evila, associate professor of chemistry and biological sciences and Linda DeVeaux, former ISU associate professor of biological sciences were the event’s organizers. Locally, hundreds of children and their parents attended this year’s festival. “We’re trying to stimulate interest in and appreciation for science and hopefully attract some of the participants to consider the sciences as a possible career,” Pfau said. “I’ve had a lot of positive responses from the people attending.” Nationally, the festival reached more than half a million people and featured 3,000 exhibits at the two-day expo in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. DeVeaux, Pfau and Evilia organized the local festival. Several other volunteers, represented Idaho State University at the national festival with an exhibit demonstrating accelerator science. Concurrent satellite science/engineer-
ing festivals took place throughout the United States, but ISU’s festival was the only one scheduled in the Intermountain West. ISU satellite festival sponsors included Idaho State University, Micron Foundation, ON Semiconductor, Idaho National Laboratory, Simplot, Wells Fargo and ISU Molecular Research Core Facility. Andrew Taylor
For more information on the ISU Science and Engineering Festival, visit www.isu.edu/isef. For more information on the national festival visit www.usasciencefestival.org.
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ESTEC Awarded $149k for Student Scholarships For the third time in almost as many years, the Energy Systems Technology and Education Center (ESTEC) at the Idaho State University College of Technology has been awarded funding for student scholarships. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently awarded $149,400 to Idaho State University for distribution to students this fall. The funding will provide ESTEC with the opportunity to support five scholarships in the amount of $6,500 for incoming students into the program. An additional 13 scholarships will also be awarded to students currently enrolled in ESTEC. Continuing students will receive up to $5,500 over
two semesters. Lawrence Beaty, executive director and chair of ESTEC, said, “These are multi-benefit scholarships that will provide opportunities for Idaho students to be able to afford an education and gain necessary skills in nuclear operations and maintenance. This focus on nuclear education is consistent with Governor [C.L. “Butch”] Otter’s initiative to enhance the long-term viability of Idaho’s nuclear industry.” ESTEC launched the Nuclear Operations Technician program in fall 2011 with help from the Idaho National Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy
research laboratory based in Idaho Falls. INL is one of ESTEC’s founding partners and provided funding for the Nuclear Technician program. INL employees also teach some of the courses. Funding received from the NRC has also awarded funding to ISU that will allow scholarship recipients the opportunity to travel to a national nuclear conference held in Florida later this year. The professional conference will provide networking and educational experiences for students focused on a nuclear career. Additional funding through the grant will also pay for scholarship recipients to travel to an internship prior to their graduation from ISU.
2012-13 Entertainment Series Celtic Crossroads Eric Bibb
September 12 at 7:30 p.m. www.ericbibb.com “Grits and Glamour Tour”
Lorrie Morgan and Pam Tillis
Acoustic Performance
October 18 at 7:30 p.m.
www.lorrie.com • www.pamtillis.com
Little River Band
January 26 at 7:30 p.m. www.celticcrossroads.ie
Paco Pena
February 6 at 7:30 p.m. www.pacopena.com
America
“40th Anniversary Tour”
March 2 at 7:30 p.m.
www.venturahighway.com
The Jason Bishop Show
November 15 at 7:30 p.m.
March 23 at 7:30 p.m. Frazier Hall
Kurt Bestor Christmas
Kingston Trio
www.littleriverband.com
December 18 at 7:30 p.m. www.kurtbestor.com
Imago Theatre - ZooZoo
January 18 at 7:30 p.m.
www.imagotheatre.com/zoozoo
www.thejasonbishopshow.com
April 6 at 7:30 p.m.
www.kingstontrio.com
Fall 2012
Striking Gold ISU Photographic Services/Susan Duncan
Using a powerful scanning electron microscope at the Idaho State University Center for Archaeology, Materials, and Applied Spectroscopy (CAMAS), ISU anthropologist and research scientist David Peterson is helping shed light on the making of gold by nomadic horsemen nearly 4,000 years ago on the Eurasian steppe grasslands of present-day Russia. About 1850-1700 B.C., at the beginning of the Late Bronze Age in Russia’s Middle Volga River Region, herders began to settle in small villages and buried their dead in burial mounds known as kurgans. Peterson discovered that ornaments from these graves were decorated using a technique called depletion gilding. Late Bronze Age inhabitants of the Middle Volga covered pendants with a foil no more than one-tenth of a millimeter thick made of an alloy of gold and silver known as electrum. While the overall gold content of the foil is less than that of the silver, through depletion gilding ancient Eurasian metallurgists were able to manipulate the concentration of gold on the outer surface to make the ornaments look like solid gold. What is even more remarkable is the incredibly small amount of gold they needed to do this, Peterson said. Through
the application of heat and naturally occurring chemicals, silver was depleted from the outer five micrometers of the foil covering one pendant, which made it appear as though it was made of pure gold (a micrometer is one thousandth of a millimeter). The gold-enriched surface is so microscopically thin that its thickness could only be measured by looking at a section cut through it with a scanning electron microscope. “Finding the use of this technique in the Russian steppes is fascinating because it’s an example of the use of a remarkable technology simply for ornamentation, more than a thousand years before gilding techniques were perfected in ancient Greece and Rome,” Peterson said. Prior to Peterson’s findings, this gilding method had only been identified and published in one other instance in the Old World, hundreds of miles to the south in Mesopotamia. Although discovered first in
artifacts from the Andes, this gilding method was used much earlier in Mesopotamia and the Eurasian steppes. Peterson began research in this area of Russia with colleagues at the Institute of History and Archaeology of the Volga in Samara, Russia at Hartwick College in Oneonta, N.Y., while he was a graduate student. He received minute samples of the kurgan gold from his Russian colleagues Pavel Kuznetsov and Oleg Mochalov, who allowed him to remove small sections from three foil-covered pendants. After examining the samples at the ISU Center for Archaeology, Materials, and Applied Spectroscopy, Peterson concluded that corrosion-based depletion gilding was applied to the foil on one of the pendants, and that a depletion gilding process may have been used on the other two, which are from a burial in a different Srubnaya kurgan cemetery at Nizhnyaya Orlyanka in Russia.
LIVE THE BENGAL EXPERIENCE
SHOW YOUR BENGAL PRIDE! Officially licensed Idaho State University merchandise is now available at our newest Pocatello area retailers: The Orange and Black Store and Alston Ink. They join the growing family of official ISU retailers, including your University Bookstore (Pocatello and Idaho Falls), Fanzz Sports Apparel, T-Shirts Plus, Idaho Unlimited, New Day Resources, Costco, Walmart, Bed, Bath & Beyond and Dick’s Sporting Goods.
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Meeting New Standards merly, ICEE director. “The new core standards and Total Instructional Alignment are the platforms to address four major challenges for educators,” Zimmerly said. Those challenges are: 1) the implementation of the State Board of Education’s Complete College Idaho program, which has the ambitious goal that 60 percent of Idahoans ages 25-34 will have a degree or certificate by 2020; 2) student achievement; 3) college and career readiness of high school graduates; and 4) positioning Idaho students to be competitive in the global marketplace. “The question for us has been ‘how do you take the new, more rigorous student standards and package them in a way that teachers can deliver them in the classroom?” said Chuck Wegner, director of curriculum for Idaho School District 25 in Pocatello. He said that his district began research on how it could organize standards into units for the purpose of instruction, which led it to the Total Instructional Alignment program. “It’s hard work and a bit ambiguous, but it is a starting point and a program that
an individual teacher can tweak and then take to their own classroom in preparation for implementing the new standards,” said Wegner, who was among nearly 500 educators attending a summer TIA training at ISU’s Pocatello campus this summer. The founder of Total Instructional Alignment and author of a book by the same title, Lisa Carter, was among those in attendance at the TIA training in Pocatello. She pointed out that although there are other states and educational institutions using her system to address the challenges posed by the Common Core State Standards, Idaho State University’s Intermountain Center for Education Effectiveness efforts are unusual. “The partnership between the Idaho State University College of Education and Idaho local education agencies to deliver TIA to Idaho K-12 teachers and administrators is unique in the nation,” Carter said. “What’s unique about Idaho is the extent universities are working with the prekindergarten to 12th-grade teachers to help meet the Common Core Standards. Those standards will help graduating K-12 students be prepared for universities. It only makes sense that universities should be involved in the process.” Teams of educators at this summer’s
ISU Photographic Services/Susan Duncan
Idaho’s ability to meet the challenge of adopting the national Common Core State Standards that will be implemented in the 2013-14 school year for preschool through high school students may hinge in part on instructional integration method developed and being presented by the Idaho State University College of Education’s Intermountain Center for Educational Effectiveness (ICEE). The ICEE began offering a method of teaching, Total Instructional Alignment, to 10 Idaho school districts in 2008 and now has trained hundreds of K-12 teachers throughout the state in scores of the state’s school districts utilizing the Total Instructional Alignment model. The ICEE has offered it to 52 school districts in Southeast Idaho alone. The Common Core State Standards are designed to ensure every student that graduates from an Idaho high school is prepared for postsecondary education or the workforce, and once there, not need remediation. These standards have been adopted by 45 U.S. states and three territories. “Total Instruction Alignment (TIA) is a method of unpacking and implementing the new standards. TIA will help ensure that kids are taught exactly what they need to know and be able to do,” said Chuck Zim-
Teachers learn about Total Instructional Alignment at a recent conference held on the Idaho State campus.
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conferences learned and implemented the TIA teaching model, which aligns standards with curriculum, curriculum with instruction, and then assesses how effectively the standards have been met. “The Idaho Total Instructional Alignment is a grassroots, teacher-driven process to design and develop a method by which the Common Core State Standards can be integrated into classroom instruction,” Zimmerly said. “ It is essential to begin the integration of the CCSS into classroom teaching this fall.” “Meeting the Common Core State Standards is a big deal,” said Susan Jenkins, director of the TIA project and College of Education assistant dean. “The time is now for learning to meet these standards and our work with Idaho teachers is critical. The ISU College of Education is in the lead pack nationally on helping educators learn TIA so they can meet the challenge inherent in these new national standards.” “Classrooms, schools and districts that have implemented the TIA program have shown a measurable improvement in their Annual Yearly Progress Reports as mandated by the state under the No Child Left Behind Act,” Jenkins said. Conference participants were organized into teams of teachers, which are organized by content area and grade level. Those teams used the software and technology provided at the conference to develop “Total Instructional Alignment” documents that will be uses as roadmaps for their class instruction and assessment for the upcoming academic year. These documents have become a pivotal instructional tool for participating districts and are routinely used in professional development workshops and classrooms. Andrew Taylor
Idaho Museum of Natural History Has New Affiliation The Idaho Museum of Natural History at Idaho State University has announced a new affiliation and new cooperative research ventures with the Smithsonian Institution. “This is a great opportunity for Idaho,” said Herbert Maschner, director of the Idaho Museum of Natural History. “We’re the only museum in the state with a Smithsonian Affiliation, and one of the few in the Intermountain West.” Smithsonian Affiliations offers museums, educational and cultural organizations across the country the opportunity to have greater access to Smithsonian collections and resources. Through the Smithsonian Affiliations Program, the Smithsonian shares its artifacts, programs, and expertise across America. The Idaho Museum of Natural History will now be able to host Smithsonian Institute exhibits. In addition to borrowing objects from the Smithsonian’s collections, many Affiliates are incorporating the outreach services the Institution offers—for curriculum development in local schools, lectures, traveling exhibitions, workshops, study tours and other programs. The Smithsonian also shares its staff expertise in areas of conservation, collections care and exhibition development with Affiliate partners. With this new Smithsonian Affiliation, those who join as Friends of the Idaho Museum of Natural History will
also become members of the Smithsonian and receive the Smithsonian Magazine and other benefits, such as discounts at Smithsonian Museum stores, the Smithsonian Catalogue, SmithsonianStore.com and to some Smithsonian exhibits. The Smithsonian has entered into a two-year collaboration with IMNH’s Virtualization Laboratory to digitally scan bone artifacts and other items from Smithsonian collections. Robert Schlader and Nicholas Clement from the IMNH Virtualization Laboratory will travel to Washington, D.C., to take images of Smithsonian collections, and then produce 3-D digital records that will then be transferred back to the Smithsonian. “The fact that the Smithsonian Institution recognizes the unique services of our 3-D Virtualization Laboratory, and saw the opportunity for us to work together, is a credit to the work we do,” Maschner said. “It is an honor to be working with one of the finest museums in the world.” As part of these agreements, the Smithsonian Institution will also send a conservator specializing in methods of preserving and displaying natural history collections, including everything from feathers to fossils. “These new agreements with the Smithsonian are so wonderful and exciting that I don’t even know how to process it,” Maschner said. “And they will bring great recognition to Idaho State University.”
MASTER OF ACCOUNTANCY IN ONE YEAR PROGRAMS IN IDAHO FALLS AND POCATELLO
College of Business
CONTACT: KEN SMITH, PH.D. smithken@isu.edu (208)251-2906
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Molecular Research Core Facility Provides Support for ISU Research Efforts This year Idaho State University researcher Shawn Bearden published a study that gives hints for the effective treatment of dementia, while his colleague, Michael Thomas, has published a study on the possible environmental causes for the increase in autism. These two prominent studies share a common thread: both would not have been possible to complete at Idaho State University without the ISU Molecular Research Core Facility located in the Gale Life Sciences Building. “The MRCF is a vital resource to ISU as we move ahead in biomedical research,” said Deb Easterly, director of ISU Research Development and Compliance. “Researchers need state-of-the-art equipment and facilities to do highlevel research and that is what the Core provides.” Although the focus of ISU’s Molecular Research Core Facility is biomedical research, it is used by a full spectrum of researchers in a variety of disciplines including ecology, anthropology, psychology, pharmacy and chemistry.
“The Molecular Research Core Facility is a lynchpin for biomedical research, but it serves the entire research community at ISU,” said Thomas, MRCF academic director and assistant professor of biological sciences. “The instrumentation and expertise provided by this facility is key to a lot of this university’s research endeavors.” Nearly $10 million in research grants and contracts coming into ISU depend on MRCF resources and the facility is a key component of ISU’s future plans for biomedical research. Within the last year the University invested nearly $600,000 to acquire a confocal microscope, a powerful imaging instrument. The MRCF also was awarded $200,000 from the National Science Foundation to acquire “nextgeneration” DNA sequencing technology. The MRCF provides services that range from DNA sequencing and molecular analysis to cell sorting and advanced biological imaging. Lab personnel collaborate with researchers on experimental design, conduct lab analyses, and assist in analyzing and interpreting data. ISU Photographic Services/Susan Duncan
They also assists principal investigators in the preparation of research grant proposals, and anticipate future needs for instrumentation and expertise. The MRCF isn’t just used by ISU. Its clients include researchers from other institutions, including the University of Idaho, Boise State University, the University of Montana, Montana State University and other universities in the Intermountain West. Government clients include the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Idaho National Laboratory. The MRCF also is developing some relationships with private enterprises. “Our staff is second to none in the Intermountain West, and they are the reason for our growth and success,” Thomas said. That staff includes managing director Erin O’Leary-Jepsen, research assistants Michelle Andrew and Christine Ryan and bioinformatics data analyst Luobin Yand. A third research assistant will be hired soon. Between two and four undergraduate interns are employed per semester. Besides Thomas, the MRCF is led by biological sciences professor Jean Pfau, director of cell sorting, and Bearden, director of biological imaging. The MRCF is overseen by a steering committee comprised of nine research faculty from across campus. Although it receives institutional support, the MRCF is increasingly self-sufficient. With this staff, the MRCF plays an important role in the training of undergraduate and graduate students, provides graduate student seed grants for biomolecular research, and is tightly integrated into future plans for a Bachelor of Science/Master of Science training program in bioinformatics at ISU. “We provide expertise and instrumentation that is found nowhere else in Idaho,” Thomas said. “And I’m proud of our role in education at ISU.”
For more information on the Molecular Research Core Facility visit www.isu.edu/bios/MRCF/. Top left to right: Andrew Carroll, Shawn Bearden, Jason Reynolds Bottom left to right: Cheng-Hung Chen, Jamie Mayo, Bryce Rhodehouse, Emily Renner
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Molecular Research Core Facility Assists in Discoveries about Autism and Dementia draw any conclusions, yet.” The team discovered that certain psychoactive pharmaceuticals induced gene expression patterns in a fish model that mimic expression patterns in humans with autism. The gene expression patterns are associated with neurological development and growth. The fish exposed to pharmaceuticals also displayed behavioral characteristics that indicate anxiety-like symptoms. This shows that gene expression induced by drugs had a broader impact on the fish. The drugs studied include an antiseizure drug carbamazepine and two anti-depression drugs, fluoxetine (brand names include Prozac) and venlafaxine (brand names incude Effexor). These represent some of the most frequently prescribed pharmaceuticals. This raises the possibility that pregnant women who drink water containing trace concentrations of these drugs will pass them along to the fetus, according to Thomas. The fetus has a leaky bloodbrain barrier, which allows drugs to pass directly into the developing brain. “The drugs affect activity of serotonin and other neurotransmitters, which are important in the development of neurological networks and, basically, affect how the brain is wired,” Thomas said. Again, Thomas emphasized that his study is early-stage work and more study is needed—at this time there is no reason
ISU Photographic Services/Bethany Baker
A team of Idaho State University researchers discovered that fish show autism-like gene expression after exposure to water containing psychoactive pharmaceuticals. This study was published in June in the open access journal PLoS ONE and was widely publicized nationally and internationally. The results may suggest an environmental trigger for autism, although this finding may only apply to genetically predisposed individuals. “The psychoactive pharmaceuticals were tested at concentrations similar to those found in aquatic systems,” said Michael Thomas, ISU associate professor of biological sciences, lead researcher in the project and academic director of the MRCF. “This discovery implies that these drugs might be involved in the increase in autism in the past 30 years.” Thomas said that although these findings are significant, it is too early to draw firm conclusions about the study. “We’ve really proposed a new question, but not any new answers,” he said. “But asking a new question is the first step towards learning something new, and in many ways, it’s the most important step. It is our hope that this new question will prove useful for the autism research community, and eventually lead to fruitful new answers. It is important to remember that much more research on this topic is needed – it’s not time to
Jason Reynolds and Jamie Mayo for pregnant women to be concerned about results of the study. The ISU research team involved with this project included Loubin Yang, biological sciences research assistant professor, and ISU graduate students Parag Joshi, Victor Ezike and Gauray Kaushik. For the project, Thomas also collaborated with Rebecca Klaper at the University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee School for Freshwater Sciences.
Researchers Find Strong Clues for the Treatment of Some Forms of Dementia In a different study utilizing the MRCF, ISU researchers in the Bearden Vascular Health Laboratory found clues on how to block the effects of a chemical in the brain that contributes to dementia and strokes. Shawn Bearden said that his laboratory has documented that the drug, memantine, can counter the effects that the chemical homocysteine has in disrupting the blood-brain barrier. Disruption of this barrier is believed to contribute to vascular cognitive impairment diseases such as dementia and stroke. In brief, molecules in the bloodstream can cause leakiness in tiny blood vessels of the brain. Normally, our brains have a tight barrier from the blood because elements in the blood can be toxic to the brain. It has also been shown that people
who have an abnormally high level of homocysteine, which can result from vitamin deficiencies as well as genetic differences, have a higher risk of stroke and dementia. Bearden tested mice that had mildly elevated levels of homocysteine. As expected, these mice had leaky blood-brain barriers. “When the mice were administered the drug we were able to rescue the leakiness,” Bearden said. “Then we did the same experiment using cultures of blood vessel cells, treating them with homocysteine and then rescuing leakiness using the drug.” These studies confirm both that the presence of homocysteine can cause the brain microvascular leakiness and that the drug memantine, in some instances, can help “rescue” that problem.
“This is an important advance,” continued Bearden, “because we have potentially found a completely different approach for treating homocysteinerelated dementia. We must caution that these are preliminary findings, but the results are encouraging.” Bearden’s group published their findings in the American Society of Hematology Journal, Blood, one of the premier scientific journals in its field. “There are a lot of details to work out concerning our findings,” Bearden said. “We think that treatment with this drug might be applicable to some subsets of people suffering from dementia, specifically in patients with homocysteinerelated vascular dementia, but there is plenty more we need to know. This study is just the beginning.”
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16 Idaho State University Magazine
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Hearing the Call Cynthia and her father Richard Hill
Responding to a shortage of speechlanguage pathologists nationwide and to Idaho rural communities in particular, Idaho State University created a 36-month online Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology program to complement its resident programs. The online program, which will produce its first graduates in August 2013, allows the kind of access many students need. “I just would not be able to pursue a career in speech pathology if it were not for ISU’s online program,” said Lauren Tandy, 28, from Post Falls, Idaho, who has a 2-1/2-year-old child and is pregnant with her second child. “I couldn’t have started the pre-professional program anywhere else with a 6-month-old child to care for.” Tandy first heard about the need for speech pathologists when she was living in Kingston, an unincorporated community in northern Idaho located off I-90 east of Coeur d’Alene. “Part of my decision to get into the field was after I talked to superintendents of schools, teachers, health providers and
parents in rural Idaho who expressed the dire need for speech-language pathologists,” Tandy said. Upon graduating she said she plans to practice in north Idaho. “I have to have a full-time job. Not working is not an option for me,” said Mia Anderson, 31, from Atlanta, Ga., who is among those who were on campus this summer, and runs restaurants in her hometown. “There are very few online programs in the country and none in Georgia, so it was great I got into ISU’s program. There are about as many options in the field as there are majors in the university.” ISU developed a Web-based program so a student could complete the master’s degree online if he or she did not live close to a university that offered such a program, or for students that have other family and work commitments that encompass a major part of their day, said Kathleen Kangas, chair of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders in the ISU School of Rehabilitation and Communication Sciences.
More information in ISU’s speech-language pathology program is available online at www.isu.edu/csed/speech/index.shtml.
“There’s just such a tremendous need for speech-language pathologists who are needed in a variety of settings,” Kangas said. “We saw a need for an online program and one of our major reasons for implementing it was to serve the rural districts in Idaho.” ISU’s SLP program is the only one in Idaho. It annually accepts 18 students each at its main Pocatello campus, at ISU-Meridian, and in the online program. “The program arose because of the significant insight of (the late) Brenda Malepeai, the Clinic Director in the Department,” said Anthony Seikel, SLP professor. “She and the faculty recognized our departmental responsibility to the citizens of Idaho, since ISU is the only program that educates speech-language pathologists in the state. We felt that the only way we could meet the needs of rural Idaho was to bring the program to place-bound students.” Students in the online program complete the bulk of their coursework online, but come to the ISU Pocatello campus for eight weeks in the summer to complete
Below: Mia Andersen works with Rowan Sawchentco. Opposite: Top left to right: Shauna McIntyre, Nikole Combs, Meghan Betis, Emily Kearl, Alysa Van Orman; Middle left to right: Courtni Doherty, Jennifer, Donahue, Eva Erickson, Ashley Shank, Kristine Piper-Fangman, Lauren Tandy; Caitlin Pfeiffer, Mia Anderson, Amy Dunn ISU Photographic Services/Susan Duncan
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ISU Photographic Services/Susan Duncan
clinical work, learn how to treat patients and write reports, and receive in-person instruction from ISU professors and instructors. This summer’s cohort includes students from as far away as the Middle East and Greece abroad, and as far away as Georgia in the United States. Several of the students commented that despite the fact the program is taught online it has a very personable feel. “What makes this program are the people like Sarah (Knudson, director of CSED Online Program) or Dr. (Professor, Anthony) Seikel,” Anderson said. “They’ll pick up the phone and call you just to ask you how you’re doing. You can talk to them anytime you want to.” The students keep in touch with each other and with their instructors through various social media and Web communicating platforms. The students use Google Chat to converse with instructors and their peers, there is an online forum designed for the class, and Facebook plays a prominent role. “In a learning environment and context where it would be easy to feel disconnected, I feel strong personal connections,” said Ashley Shank, 28, of Portland, Ore. “Here especially, the instructors are very easy to talk to.” The job outlook is bright for the students in both ISU’s online and resident speech pathology programs. Most will have job offers before they graduate and some have had job offers already, early in their completion of the program. “Our idea was that students in rural Idaho who were able to go to school and gain clinical experience in their home locales would be more likely to stay in those communities and serve them, basically a ‘grow your own’ philosophy,” Seikel said. “As it turns out, it has served not only rural Idaho, but rural and place-bound students across the country. “Online students are very determined, dedicated, and pro-active,” Seikel added. “They work very hard in this program, and are eager to take on more load and responsibility. We are very proud of these students, and feel a great responsibility to them and the profession. We want them to have the best education they can have.“ Andrew Taylor
What is Speech-language pathology? What is speech-language pathology? Sarah Knudson, director of CSED Online Program, answers that question: Speech-language pathology is the profession in which certified, master’s-level clinicians assess and treat a variety of communication disorders. Many people think of speech pathologists as the people in school who help kids to say their sounds, but the profession really covers much more than that. Speech-language pathologists deal typically with the main areas of communication, including receptive language (what people understand), expressive language (what people say, or convey through alternative means, such as sign language or computerized voice output), articulation (speech sounds), fluency (more commonly known as ‘stuttering’), voice (pitch, quality and loudness of speech), dysphagia (disorders of swallowing), and pragmatic skills, or the social use of language for communication. Speech-language pathology is critically important to anyone who has ever experienced difficulty communicating, or loves someone who has experienced difficulty. We use communication to express our wants and needs on a very basic level, but we also communicate to connect with other people - share ideas, thoughts, hopes, dreams, fears, all of which are critical to living a fulfilling life. Speech-language pathologists serve individuals across the lifespan - from infants to geriatric clients. These professionals work in a variety of settings: public schools, private practices, hospitals, skilled nursing facilities (nursing homes), early intervention programs, and rehabilitation clinics. In children, they often assess and treat problems with speech sound production (perhaps everyone has heard a child who cannot say an ‘r’ correctly), and language delays. Some children have speech and language problems, when all other areas tend to develop normally. They also work with individuals with concomitant disorders that affect communication, such as autism, Down Syndrome, cleft palate, traumatic brain injury, cerebral palsy, hearing impairment, and many other lesser-known conditions. In the adult years, we work with individuals who have difficulty communicating secondary to a stroke, dementia or traumatic brain injury. Speech-language pathology is a very broad and diverse field, with many opportunities for employment working with clients of various age ranges and disorder areas. Andrew Taylor
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18 Idaho State University Magazine
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Kate’s Journey: ing to be cancer.’ I was trying to be posiWhile on bed rest at St. Luke’s Boise When Kate Brussé walked across the tive,” Brussé recalled. Despite her family Medical Center, Brussé discovered a stage at ISU-Meridian’s commencement history, she hoped her persistence with a two-centimeter lump in her left breast. last May, few in the audience knew what healthy diet, exercise and stress manageShe consulted two doctors, one of whom had inspired this 39-year-old journalist ment would shield her from the disease. ordered an ultrasound. Both assured her to trade pen and notebook for a stethoOn a Tuesday morning 33 weeks into the lump was nothing to worry about, scope. her pregnancy, Brussé’s surgeon walked just her body adjusting to pregnancy. Born in Spokane, Wash., Brussé spent into her hospital room. “We’ve got a Another month passed, and the lump the first seven years of her life in the tiny carcinoma. You need to get your family seemed to be getting bigger. Concerned, Idaho mining town of Osburn. She later together,” he told her. Brussé consulted a third doctor who inmoved to the Southeast Idaho commu“I kept thinking this is so nity of Preston, graduated unfair. I’d done everything high school and studied “She modeled the concepts I love about nursing right during my pregnancy. I mass communication at felt like ‘why me?’ ” Brussé said. Boise State University. – autonomy and confidence in advocating for the patient, “One of my first thoughts that Brussé worked in public impeccable ethics and professionalism, holism, and morning was wondering if I relations and journalism still be around to see my before taking a reporting compassion. She empowered me to heal in the face of illness.” would children start kindergarten.” job at the Idaho Statesman Aug. 25, 2007, Brussé gave newspaper in Boise where - Kate Brussé birth to two girls, Claret and Jushe loved covering stories melle, and a boy, Treysen. The that made a difference in the girls each weighed 2 1/2 pounds. Treysen community. sisted the lump would resolve itself when tipped the scales at 4 pounds, 3 ounces. “I’ve always enjoyed helping people,” she began to breastfeed. “We were thrilled. We knew they were she said. Brussé, who’d already lost her mother going to make it,” she said. In 2007, Brussé and her husband, and grandmother to ovarian cancer and But what about Brussé’s prognosis? Chad, received some life-changing news an aunt to breast cancer, wasn’t satisfied Ten days after giving birth, Brussé of their own. Kate was pregnant with with that answer. She consulted a fourth underwent surgery to remove her left triplets. The Brussés were thrilled at the doctor, who ordered a biopsy. breast, and doctors determined the cancer prospect of becoming new parents. “I just remember thinking ‘it’s not gowas Stage 1 —meaning the tumor hadn’t entered the lymph nodes. Two and a half months later, she began 12 weeks of chemotherapy, followed by surgery to remove her right breast and ovaries. As the triplets approached their first birthday, Brussé started to have second thoughts about returning to the journalism career she loved. She couldn’t stop thinking about the nurses who’d cared for her and the triplets that year—especially St. Luke’s lactation consultant Jan Goodner, who died of breast cancer in September 2008.
ISU President Arthur C. Vailas hands Kate Brussé her diploma at ISU-Meridian Commencement on May 7, 2011. Photo by Chris Gabettas
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“She modeled the concepts I love about nursing—autonomy and confidence in advocating for the patient, impeccable ethics, professionalism and compassion. She empowered me to heal in the face of illness,” said Brussé. Inspired and touched by Goodner, Brussé wanted to become a nurse but worried about the stress a career change would place on her young family. However, her husband encouraged her to follow her dream. Brussé spent the next couple of years completing science classes required for ISU-Meridian’s accelerated nursing
program—which awards the Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree in 16 months— and preparing for the national assessment test required to enter the program. On the morning Brussé was to take the assessment test, she decided to ride her bicycle to the Meridian campus. As she opened the garage door to retrieve the bike, a hummingbird flew in—a sign, Brussé thought, that Goodner was with her in spirit.
Kate and family camping near Redfish Lake. Photo submitted by the Brussé family.
Idaho State University to Offer First Nursing Doctoral Program in Idaho State Board of Education Approves Program Slated to Start January 2013 The Idaho State University Division of Health Sciences has broken new ground again, this time by offering a Doctor of Philosophy degree in nursing through the ISU School of Nursing beginning in January 2013. The program was approved by the Idaho State Board of Education at its June meeting in Idaho Falls. “It is very exciting to see the Ph.D. in nursing officially approved by the State Board,” said Linda Hatzenbuehler, associate vice president and executive dean of the ISU Division of Health Sciences. “Plans for this program have been in the works on the ISU campus for a very long time, and the professional community
has been anxiously awaiting it. Idaho will finally have doctoral education in nursing!” “This is the first doctoral program, specifically the first Ph.D. program in nursing in Idaho,” said Karen Neill, associate director for graduate studies and professor in the ISU School of Nursing. “Our graduates will be able to conduct original research, contribute to the effectiveness of our health care system, and advance the art and science of the practice of nursing.” Six Ph.D. students will be admitted in spring 2013 as the ISU School of Nursing begins small and then grows the program. There is a huge demand for nurses
Brussé pedaled to campus, took the exam and scored in the top 1 percent nationally. January 2011, she began her nursing studies in the rigorous accelerated program, the only one of its kind in Idaho. “The experience was incredible. Everything I learned in class I could relate to,” she said. Brussé recently began a job as a registered nurse in the orthopedic and neuroscience unit at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Boise. She wants to help patients make health decisions that work for them. Brussé’s journey has taught her that disease need not limit your dreams or define your life. “In life and as a nurse, I believe you can turn the worst thing that ever happened to you into the best thing that ever happened to you,” she said. Chris Gabettas with doctorates nationally and within the state of Idaho. “Creating the new nursing Ph.D. program is really important, primarily because we need to educate future nurses, and that requires advanced degrees,” Neill said. “There has been a high demand for the doctoral education of nurses in Idaho. Before now, nurses had to leave Idaho to earn a doctorate. Now they can stay in Idaho, raise their families and access quality education.” A doctorate is the terminal degree for nursing, and more nurses with doctoral degrees are needed to teach future nurses. Besides the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Nursing degree, there is also the Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) degree, which ISU plans to offer in the future, Neill said. “I am grateful to all of the professional nurses who have contributed over the years to this project in one way or the other,” Hatzenbuehler said. “I look forward to welcoming our first class of students.” Andrew Taylor
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20 Idaho State University Magazine
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Idaho State University women’s soccer player Lanie Ward and her mother, Robyn, always enjoyed volunteering to better the lives of others. Throughout high school, Ward and her mother were members of the National Charity League, where they won the mother-daughter service award for logging the most hours. The duo worked with young children, and donated time to organizations such as Ronald McDonald House and Road Home. Robyn Ward took a trip to Kenya in 2006, and the pair began fundraising for RaFIKis, a charitable organization started by Ward’s aunt, Sue Vanderhoof. The three women had plans to return to Kenya together, but Robyn passed away suddenly two years before the trip. In 2011, Ward was able to make her first trip to Africa to work at a school for deaf children. Although her mother wasn’t there, Ward could feel her presence, and the power of what she had accomplished through her volunteer work.
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“When I got to Nakuru, all of the kids were signing my mom’s name and asking where she was,” Ward said. “The fact that they remembered her from six years ago was awesome. I felt like I already had a great connection with them through my mom.” The junior defender from Sandy, Utah, spent three weeks in Nakuru, Kenya with a group of 20 other volunteers on behalf of RaFIKis working with children at the Ngala School for the Deaf. “There were a couple of deaf educators and three deaf volunteers who came with us,” Ward said. “We tried to pair up with one of them when we were teaching since they knew sign language and could help us communicate with the kids. We took a lot of books and math exercises with us so that is what most of the lessons were based around. We also brought some art supplies and were able to teach arts, crafts and fun projects as well.” The Ngala School for the Deaf has been in operation for more than 25 years and consists of several buildings for dormitory and educational purposes. It serves students ranging from ages 5-17 in classes from Nursery to Standard Eight and offers voca-
tional training in carpentry and sewing to help students become employable once they have completed their education. Deaf children are not able to attend public schools in Kenya so boarding facilities equipped to address their special needs is their only option. The Kenyan government provides minimal financial assistance and parents of deaf children are often too poor to afford boarding fees, so deaf children are often abandoned and forced to live on the streets. RaFIKis has teamed with Ngala School for the Deaf and the Rotary Club of Nakuru to help facilitate and administer sponsorships for Ngala children. “It makes you take a step back and realize what you have and the little things you don’t need,” Ward said on the experience of meeting and working with the children in Africa. “It makes you feel incredibly grateful for everything. Those children are constantly on my mind and I think of them first. I want more people to go and experience it for themselves.” Since her trip last summer, Ward has continued her service with RaFIKis. She participated in a charity walk last October where she walked approximately four miles at Sugarhouse Park in Salt Lake City.
Visit www.kenyarafikis.org for more information on RaFIKis and how you can make donations or get involved.
She also volunteered at the annual tennis tournament put on as a fundraiser for the charity organization. Her brother also got involved with the fundraising activities as he donated a painting this last spring for the annual auction. These fundraisers help raise money for the RaFIKis organization and will fund a trip for Ward and several other volunteers to go back to Africa next summer. Ward’s work with the organization has also made an impact on her career aspirations. “I am majoring in accounting and thinking about double majoring in finance,” Ward said. “My goal is to become the head C.F.O. of a non-profit organization. RaFIKis is very small right now but hopefully it will grow and I could take over for my aunt, the current C.F.O.” Ward hopes that her work will inspire others to help in any way that they can and wants people to know how easy it is to make a difference. “Every little bit helps, no matter how small,” Ward said. “It’s really easy to do and it will help and it will make a difference.” Jaime Schroeder
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22 Idaho State University Magazine
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The Nsumba Orphanage is located on Lake Victoria about 20 miles outside of Kampala, Uganda’s capital city. Owned by the Kampala Catholic Diocese, the orphanage serves 500 children up to age 18. Most of the children have lost parents to AIDS or were found abandoned on the streets of Kampala. The children receive food, clothing, and shelter and attend elementary and high school on orphanage grounds, but life isn’t easy by American standards.
Photos courtesy of Be the Change
When members of a Treasure Valley medical team traveled to the Nsumba Orphanage in Uganda, East Africa last summer, a child handed them a note. “He said he couldn’t hear his teacher in class and could we help him,” recalled team member Judy Thorne, the HIV and viral hepatitis educator at the Idaho State University-Meridian Health Science Center. In July, the group led by Thorne and Boise physician Margaret Doucette returned to the orphanage—this time with an ISU-Meridian audiology team to help screen children for hearing problems. Also making the two-week trip was ISU-Meridian Academic Dean Bessie Katsilometes, who met with representatives of Uganda’s largest health science university to discuss establishing an educational partnership with ISU. The team is part of Be the Change Africa, a Boise-based organization that has spent the past two years helping the Nsumba Orphanage build sustainable programs in health care and clean water.
Judy Thorne, Bessie Katsilometes, Gabriel Bargen and Nicole Butler with children from the Nsumba orphanage. There is no electricity, and the orphanage was without potable water until February 2012 when Be the Change installed a solar water pump system.
Each day, the team members would board two vans outside their hotel in Kampala to begin the hour-long drive to the orphanage. The journey would take them along dirt roads and through small villages where sheep and cattle grazed. The scenery could pass for rural Idaho if not for the banana trees and 8-foot high termite hills. A priority was to complete medical histories of Nsumba’s children and students—which Be the Change began last summer. The profiles include exposure to infectious diseases, vaccinations, general growth and development history, vision and oral health. Because so many of the children have lost parents to AIDS, Thorne says
it’s important to test them for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The Uganda AIDS Commission estimates 150,000 of the country’s children under age 15 are infected with HIV, typically transferred from mother to child at birth. Working with the Uganda AIDS support network called TASO and the Ugandan Ministry of Health, Thorne tested 167 children. All were HIV-free—great news to teens orphaned by AIDS, who’d grown up fearing their HIV status. She recounted the story of two students so ecstatic about their negative test, “they were practically doing cartwheels across the orphanage grounds, showing everyone their certificates and hugging everyone.” Children who test positive are referred to Ugandan health agencies for care and treatment, said Thorne. “Uganda, to its credit, has a system in place. It’s just that many orphanages are off the beaten track and don’t know how to access resources available to them. We can serve as the conduit to those resources,” she said.
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When ISU-Meridian assistant professor and audiologist Gabriel Bargen first set eyes on the orphanage, she recalls feeling overwhelmed. “There were so many children,” she said. But she and audiology doctoral student Nicole Butler got to work, screening 150 children in five days. They found that many of the hearing issues were caused by ear wax—which can act like an earplug—and explains why children had trouble hearing their teachers in class. Bargen and Butler used special tools to remove the wax and flushed the ear with water. However, other cases were more challenging. At least seven children had severe ear infections that could’ve led to permanent hearing loss if left untreated, said Bargen. “In the United States, children have colds and ear infections all of the time. They go to the doctor for treatment,
but in Uganda it was as if the children had learned to live with the pain,” said Bargen. She tells the story of a toddler named Charles—quiet and lethargic when she detected his ear infection. Several days later and after a round of antibiotics, he was laughing and playing with his friends like a typical 2-year-old.
The World Health Organization reports that malaria is the leading cause of death in African children under age 5 and accounts for up to 40 percent of outpatient visits to health facilities and clinics. To prevent bites from malariainfected mosquitoes, the Treasure Valley team purchased 200 nets from a nearby village—injecting money into the local economy—and hung them in orphanage dormitories.
ISU-Meridian Dean Bessie Katsilometes toured the prestigious Makerere University School of Public Health in Kampala and met with its dean. The two institutions and Be the Change officials are exploring a partnership that would enable students at ISU and Makerere to study global health issues while serving the Nsumba Orphanage. Areas would likely include HIV and malaria diagno-
sis, treatment and prevention as well as programs to bolster the health-science education of orphanage children. Pointing to the increased interest in global health among university students, Katsilometes said ISU may eventually be able to offer clinical rotations in Uganda for graduate-level public health students.
You’d expect a visit to the Nsumba Orphanage to enlighten professionally. But members of the ISU delegation say the experience has touched them in a personal way. Thorne is grateful for the richness the children have brought to her life. Bargen has learned a medical mission is more than simply providing medical care. Sometimes, it means dropping what you’re doing and playing a game of volleyball with kids. As for Katsilometes? “I’ll always remember the joy of 500 children living in the moment— despite poverty and hardship. It was humbling,” she said. Chris Gabettas
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24 Idaho State University Magazine
Fall 2012
Few people who have followed the career of Cincinnati Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis would call the man unsuccessful. In his first assistant coaching job at Idaho State University, just one year after he played linebacker, quarterback and safety for the ISU Bengals, he helped bring the team to their first, and thus far only, national championship. Lewis’s successes in the pro football arena have been numerous. In the 2000 regular season, Lewis earned a Superbowl championship as defensive coordinator for the Baltimore Ravens. The Ravens’ defense set the NFL record for fewest points allowed in a 16-game campaign (165), clipping 22 points off the previous mark. His Bengals log includes AFC North Division championships in 2005 and 2009, and he coached his first five years (2003-07) without experiencing a losing season, the club’s longest such streak since 1977. In 2009, Lewis was named the Associated Press Coach of the Year as well as the Pro Football Weekly/ Pro Football Writers of America Coach of the Year. The 2009 season was also the first time in Bengals history that the team swept the AFC North Division. He is currently the Cincinnati Bengals’ longesttenured coach in history. There is little doubt that the man is a winner. But Alumni Association Director K.C. Felt, and others who know him, see another side to Coach Lewis. Felt recently travelled to Cincinnati to award Lewis with a Homecoming Distinguished Alumnus award. She was impressed by the easy, respectful way he seemed to treat everyone, from upper-level staff to assistants. “He treats everyone the same. They all respect him,” she said. “He’s the same guy today as he was when he was an assistant coach at ISU. He is humble, kind, and one of the nicest men I know.” Lewis will be honored at the annual Homecoming Awards banquet, although his football schedule does not allow him to attend. Lewis said he was honored to
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ISU Photographic Services
receive the award. “I’m honored, I’m flattered and I am excited to continue to represent ISU well,” he said. “I’m excited to continue to do what I can to help the University. I can’t wait to get to Pocatello in the near future, and I just want to say, Go Bengals!” Lewis’s contributions to Idaho State University and the Cincinnati community extend beyond the football field. In 2002, he started the Marvin R. Lewis Endowment at Idaho State University for deserving student-athletes. During his first six years with the Cincinnati Bengals, he made more than 300 appearances with the public, and he encourages his players to become active members of the community as well. In 2003, he created the Marvin Lewis Community Fund, which has donated more than $5.5 million for educational and community programs. The Marvin Lewis Scholarship Fund assists students in Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana. His Learning is Cool program rewards students in Cincinnati public schools for good academic performance. To date, the Fund has directly impacted more than 300,000 people through its programs. In 2009, the Marvin Lewis Community Fund received the Steve Patterson Award (individual athlete category) for excellence in Sports Philanthropy. “He just does things the right way,” Felt said, “and we are so proud of him.”
Recipients Award Marvin R. Lewis, Jr. Distinguished Alumnus Award Dennis and Pam Moodie William J. Bartz Award Dr. Stephen S. Feit ISU Achievement Award Stephen A. Chatterton ISU Distinguished Service Ted Messmore President’s Medallion David Sanna President’s Medallion Carl K. Davis President’s Medallion Cassandra Moore Young Alumni Award Michael B. Machurek Parade Marshal
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26 Idaho State University Magazine
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As it passes by on the way to pick up recycling materials, Idaho State University’s biodiesel John Deere Gator work vehicle emits a smell closer to that of hamburgers and fries than the smoky, acrid scent produced by traditional diesel-power vehicles. The Gator is running on cooking oil the ISU Rendezvous Complex and the Pond Student Union converted to be used as a biodiesel fuel. “We’re using fryer oil that was previously going to waste to sustain our recycling program,” said Robin Colling, environmental and safety manager for ISU Facilities Services. “And our biodiesel is a carbon neutral, EPA-preferred fuel. It also has other good attributes. It is nontoxic to the environment in a spill. It degrades faster than sugar and is less toxic than salt.” Colling conceived the idea to use ISU’s waste cooking oil for the better good when, as superintendent of custodial services, he was completing a “routine walk-through” of the College of Technology’s Roy F. Chris-
tensen Building. When walking through that building’s kitchen he saw students draining fryer oil into metal drums for disposal. “That got me thinking that oil could be put to better use,” Colling said. He and his son, Mathew Colling, put their idea into action. Mathew and Robin both had an interest in biodiesel fuel, and the younger Colling had some experience working with it. “My dad and I got information together and researched it,” said Mathew, 25, who has earned an associate degree in welding from ISU and is currently a chemistry major. “We got hooked up with the chemistry lab at ISU and they let us use it in the summer when it was empty, and that’s where we put our first test batch together.” The first batch produced about a liter of fuel. Now ISU Facilities Services is producing up to 40 gallons of biodiesel per week and has plans for producing more from cooking oil collected from the College of
Technology kitchen, Garrison Hall and the Pond Student Union. Furthermore, ISU’s biodiesel production has grown into more than just a sustainable, green energy source for Idaho State University because it now also features an academic component. Facilities Services works with the College of Technology’s Energy Systems Technology and Education Center (ESTEC) to produce biodiesel and train students at the same time. “ESTEC really likes the biodiesel program because it gives them a real-world system to train their students on and give them real-world, hands-on experience,” Mathew said. “Together, ESTEC and Facilities Services are continually checking to see what we can do to make the fuel better and more efficiently. We keep refining the process to make a better product quicker. We accomplish the goal of educating people and at the exact same time we get the benefits of sustainability and saving money.” Facilities Services has created a mobile biodiesel-processing unit that can be set up at different sites to produce fuel, and the mobile unit is also painted, which advertises the program. The biodiesel unit was pulled in last year’s ISU Homecoming Parade, which prompted a lot of questions and comments about ISU’s recycling biodiesel program. Robin said that he’s proud his department is using a green, carbon-neutral fuel to power the vehicles that pick up recycling around campus. The fuel can also be used to power campus lawn mowers and snowplows. “We’re using a waste product to sustain our recycling program,” Robin said. “And we intend to produce and use more biodiesel for other programs.” Overall, Facility Services’ Custodial Services has beefed up ISU’s recycling efforts, undertaking a larger role in collecting and managing recycling at the University since September 2010. This has resulted in a greater amount of recycling materials being collected. ISU Custodial Services implemented a new system to collect recycling at most buildings on campus (auxiliary groups still collect recycling at some ISU main campus buildings). They created new areas for collecting recycling in buildings, and found a place to temporarily store the collected recycling before it is transported from the ISU campus. Managers also formed teams and had to figure out what the cost of recycling was in terms of staffing and mileage. More recycling bins were distributed around campus, and that number of bins continues to grow as the whole program grows. “We incorporated recycling into the
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ISU Photographic Services/Susan Duncan
Mathew and Robin Colling with two boxes of the oil that they are using to produce fuel. team activities our custodians complete on a nightly basis,” said Loretta Taylor, custodial services manager. Since September 2010 Facilities Services has collected more than 177,000 pounds of paper, plastic and aluminum on the Pocatello campus and has become the primary recycling entity on campus, although other recycling groups remain active at some buildings. In 2011, Facilities Services recycled 73.5 tons of materials and its pace of collection has grown in 2012. In 2012, recycled materials included more than 57,000 pounds of cardboard, 29,000 pounds of white paper, 53,900 pounds of office pack (non-white paper), 3,768 pounds of plastics and metal, and 2,385 pounds of newspaper. The money ISU receives for its recycled materials also helps offset the cost of the program. Facilities Services recycling efforts were
boosted in April 2012 when the Coca-Cola Foundation awarded a grant to ISU and issued 72 recycling bins designed specifically for placement at locations around the Pocatello campus. ISU Facilities Services business officer Jamie Hansen wrote the grant. Coca-Cola received more than 1,000 applicants for that grant and ISU was one of 48 entities selected. Recycling and creating biodiesel are only two parts of Idaho State University’s extensive green efforts. “We’re looking for better ways to complete and expand our recycling and other green programs,” said Robin Colling. “We want to leave as light an environmental footprint as we can.”
For example, in recent years, just by changing the lighting in ISU main campus parking lots, ISU has saved 203,000 kilowatts of electricity annually. In the larger buildings on campus Facilities Services is switching to LED lighting to reduce wattage and is reducing energy costs on heating and cooling, and using less water. “In the future, we’re looking at some bigger proposals and grants for a variety of projects and we’re looking at developing a lot more solar power and using more electric vehicles,” Colling said. Colling has plans big and small for improving ISU’s green efforts, and he’s not opposed to harboring some big visions. “I’d like to move a lot more into solar power,” Colling said. “A big dream of mine, sometime a long way down the road, would be to have solar stalls on our parking lots. You could have solar panels for roofing and the cars could park in the shade, and there would be a charging station pole for electric cars to plug into for an added benefit. “I’d also like to have underground tanks for water under our parking lots that capture storm water that we could use to water grass,” added Colling These latter visions may seem like pipe dreams now, but the department that began ISU’s biodiesel program and expanded its recycling efforts has proven it can be creative and effective in green endeavors. Andrew Taylor
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ISU Chamber choir Performs Across europe
Saint Peter’s Basilica, located within Vatican City, has the largest interior of any Christian Church in the world and is regarded as one of the holiest Catholic sites.
Singing there for a Mass is so cool it is hard to describe.
“It was incredible. I have no words to explain it,” said Luis Rodriguez, Idaho State University Chamber Choir president, who was one of its 22 members that sang in St. Peter’s Basilica this May as part of a singing tour. “We were in the home of (composer) Palestrina (who died in 1594) and he composed for the space we were singing in. It was a fantastic experience.” Members of the ISU Chamber Choir completed a two-week singing tour in Europe this May. The majority of the tour was spent in Italy, where the choral group performed at other concerts, Masses and recitals in Rome, Siena, Florence, Lucca and Venice. The trip ended with four days in Innsbruck, Austria, where the choir participated in a choral festival. One of the biggest highlights of the trip for most choir members, however, was performing at St. Peter’s Basilica. Freshman John Punt, 19 of Idaho Falls, added his take on this performance. “I’ve never performed in a setting on the scale of St. Peter’s Basilica,” he said. “Being in such a great hall like that was amazing.” There were about 1,000 people in attendance at the Mass, according to Scott Anderson, Chamber Choir director and director of ISU Choral Activities, who said, “Only a handful of choirs get to sing Sunday Mass at the Main Altar in St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s very significant, and I could honestly tell the students on the tour that it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”
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Before the tour, Anderson had to submit recordings of the ISU Chamber Choir to the Vatican, which then approved the performance. “I enjoyed that venue (St. Peter’s) the most because there was such historical significance there,” said Princess Young, a graduating business major from Mountain Home. “St. Peters is an epicenter for the Catholic religion, which has shaped a lot of the history in that area.” Not all of the group’s concerts were on such a scale. An unscheduled performance in an 11th-century church in San Gimignano, a small medieval town outside of Florence, was also one of the tour’s more memorable experiences, according to both Anderson and Punt. That performance was as intimate as the St. Peters concert was grand. “We had not even planned singing there, but the guide spoke to the priest and we sang a song,” Punt said. “Then the priest gave us a tour of the church, speaking Italian the whole time that was translated by our guide. It was something you can’t pay for. It was a unique experience.” Although the choir performed only for the priest and a few tourists in the ancient, fresco-decorated church, it was still special. “It was an overwhelming moment for me,” Anderson said. “The sound of the choir in that 10th Century church was incredible, it was a rarified moment. There were only a few people in the church, but that didn’t matter.” The choir finished its tour with a four-day stay in Innsbruck, Austria, to participate in the “Eph Ehly, The Passion Within Choral Festival,” which featured four other U.S. university choirs touring Europe. The 75-year-old Ehly who the festival was honoring, was a mentor and teacher of Anderson when the ISU director was pursuing his doctorate at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Ehly was also a close friend to Anderson, and to the other choir directors who were participating in the festival. This gave the ISU Chamber Choir’s participation in the festival an especially personal twist for Anderson: Ehly could not attend the festival because he was dealing with the serious illness of his wife Jan. Only four months before, the Ehlys had lost their home and possessions to a fire. “He couldn’t make the trip. There was a lot of heavy emotion surrounding the festival, because of all Ehly was going through,” Anderson said. “My students had never met Ehly, but they got to know him through the synergy between the other directors and me. There was an extra sentiment at the festival, especially at the final concert.“ Tour highlights were many for the ISU contingent, from enjoying the canals and wonders of Venice to strolling around Flor-
Scott Anderson with ISU music graduate Abbi Clark and Choir President Luis Rodriguez. ence and seeing the statue of David. And then there was the view of the Alps from Innsbruck. And too many other highlights to list. “It was one of the best experiences of my life so far,” Punt said. “Particularly in terms of understanding other cultures and where we come from. The whole thing in general was a unique experience.” Young expressed her gratitude at having participated. “I am very thankful I got to go on this trip,” she said. “I’m thankful the music department and ISU offer these kinds of opportunities.” Rodriguez perhaps spoke for many of the other participants when he said, “There was no favorite part for me; it was all just so amazing. I just wish it didn’t end and I want to go back.” Andrew Taylor
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As a child growing up in Salt Lake City, Jeremy Farrell recalls having a high aptitude in math. He tested in the upper 5 percent nationally in a mathematics exam in fifth grade and was put in advanced math classes through seventh grade, but his love of numbers was interrupted. During junior high Farrell said he got “involved in a lot of not so great activities,” but declined to elaborate on them in print. His disengagement from school was gradual. He first started missing a few classes and then stopped going to classes entirely. He was transferred to the Creek Side Alternative High School in Salt Lake City, but then “officially stopped going to school” in ninth grade. This spring Jeremy Farrell completed the journey from being a junior high school dropout to becoming one of 13 Idaho State University students honored as a 2012 Outstanding Student Achievement Award winner, the top University honor an ISU student can attain. His advice for those who have dropped out or are looking for a change is, “Start doing something you like. Once you start changing it is hard to stop and don’t worry too much about it – just start.” The 23-year-old Farrell, a statistics major, earned the OSA Award for the College of Science and Engineering, Natural and Physical Sciences. Farrell followed a nontraditional path to arrive at ISU and was a “nontraditional student” while at ISU, married and with two children. Noting that his “family life was not the best,” Farrell moved to Killeen, Texas, when he was 16 to live with his 21-yearold brother, who was in the Army. “It got me out of a bad situation I was in,” noted Farrell. “It was good living with my brother. Before I moved down there we were not that close, but it was a bonding experience for us. Living there cleared my head and I straightened up my act.” His brother encouraged Jeremy to pursue his GED, which he did, while working a variety of part-time and fulltime jobs. When Jeremy was 18, his older brother was deployed to Iraq, and Jeremy returned to Salt Lake City and moved in with his sister a short time before living on his own. “In 2006 I got my GED, actually about six months after I would have graduated if I’d stayed in school,” Jeremy said. In Salt Lake City, Farrell worked construction jobs, earned an EMT certificate from the Academy for Emergency Science, and met and married his wife, Janel Davis, a native of Pocatello. When Janel became pregnant with the couple’s first
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ISU Photographic Services/Susan Duncan
son, they moved to Pocatello to be closer to Janel’s parents. While working a variety of construction jobs, Farrell applied for EMT jobs but was unsuccessful and was encouraged by his in-laws to start at Idaho State University. When he took a statistics class – yes, statistics, the class many undergraduates abhor and recoil from as if it were a demon torture test – from DeWayne Derryberry, ISU assistant professor of mathematics, Farrell rediscovered his love of numbers. “I really like to get in and play with numbers,” Farrell said. “I love mathematics, but it is not applied enough. The higher up you go in math the more abstract it becomes, and it is harder to relate to the real world. “Statistics,” he continued, “by its very nature is an applied discipline. You get a solid foundation in theory, but you get to apply models and say something about the real world. I love analyzing data sets and drawing real-world conclusions.” This passion panned out for Farrell. His command of statistics, along with his minor in computer science, also allowed him to be hired at a job before he graduated from ISU. He is a software developer and programmer for Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Company. At ISU, Farrell applied for a job at chemistry Professor John Kalivas’s Chemometrics Research Center. After a rigorous interview, Farrell was accepted to work at the lab and used his statistical background and flourished working in
the laboratory. “ISU has some great opportunities for undergraduates to do research,” Farrell said. “Dr. Kalivas does a lot of amazing research and he expects a lot out of you. He works with statistical models and applied statistical models applied to large chemistry data sets. Working in his lab cemented a lot of the ideas I had learned in classes, and it really enhanced my learning experience by teaching me independent research skills.” Farrell had exemplary success working in Kalivas’s laboratory, eventually co-authoring two research manuscripts that will appear in scholarly journals. He also presented poster and oral sessions at national research conferences. “Everyone should have to present to their professional peers and experts in their field at a professional conference at least once,” Farrell said. “It’s a learning experience.” Capping off his undergraduate research career was being selected as one of 74 undergraduates nationwide to present research at the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) hosted on Capitol Hill in April, where Farrell interacted with ISU congressional delegation and other members of Congress. During the 4-1/2 years Farrell attended ISU as a nontraditional student he has been busy. He’s a husband, a father of two young boys, and he worked part-time throughout his college career, and he was involved in a variety of extracurricular activities including being a member of the Phi Kappa Phi National
Jeremy Farrell with sons, Vincent, 4, and Daniel, 1. Honor Society and the Golden Key Honor Society, and was president of the ISU G2 Math/Computer Science Club for two years and a member for three. “You know, you have to get it done,” Farrell said, referring to his busy schedule. “You can’t procrastinate – there’s not room for it. Get it done.” He also credited the support of his wife. “She took care of most of the family things during the week,” Farrell said. “Saturdays were just for family and Sundays were for studying all day, from whenever I got up until midnight or 1 in the morning.” Farrell is excited about his new job with Farm Bureau Mutual, and plans to pursue a master’s degree, and possibly a doctorate. “My eventual aspiration is to mold my two interests, statistics and computer science, and combine research data mining and machine learning,” he said. He attributed some of his success to dropping out of junior high. “I learned responsibility in the years in between (dropping out and getting back in school). It gave me motivation to come back and better myself.” Farrell said. “Another motivation for going to college was when my wife was pregnant. I didn’t want our future in the clouds. It was strong motivation for continuing college.” Andrew Taylor
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ISU Photographic Services/Susan Duncan
Susan Goslee Assistant Professor English and Philosophy Susan Goslee, Ph.D., is a published poet who joined the ISU faculty in the fall semester of 2007. She balances her time between teaching, writing and department committee work. As part of the class, “Literary Magazine Production,” Goslee advises the publication of Black Rock & Sage, ISU’s student arts journal. The journal publishes creative work ranging from prose and poetry to art and music. Under her guidance Black Rock & Sage changed to a student-only publication. From her first poems published in Quarterly West, she has had poems published in top journals including Diagram, Sonora Review, Northwest Review, Seneca Review, Gulf Coast, Spork, Indiana Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Prairie Schooner, Third Coast, West Branch, to name but a few. What inspired you to be a university professor? I enjoy working with young people and working with a group towards a shared goal or on a shared project. Why teach in a university setting? Teaching at ISU enables me to pursue my own research in addition to teaching. This is a great mix. If you weren’t a university professor what do you think you would be doing? I was a psychology major in college so it’s possible I might have pursued a career in developmental/abnormal psychology. I still find that field fascinating.
What prompted you to go into poetry? I went into poetry because I thought you didn’t need to know punctuation! I thought you could say whatever you wanted and nobody cared if it meant anything because it sounded deep. Only later did I learn that it’s the exact opposite, but by that point I had already become a poetry addict, so I was stuck. What has teaching taught you about yourself? Teaching is often very humbling. I’ve learned that I’m not naturally a very good listener. However, when I make an effort to listen thoughtfully, it really pays off. What is the most difficult aspect of teaching? I’m still learning how to foster discussion as opposed to slipping into lecturing. What inspired you to enter higher education? I am keenly interested in writing and studying poetry. I also like teaching writing and literature, so a university setting seems like a natural fit. Why do you think Black Rock & Sage is significant to ISU? BR&S is very important because it’s the only student journal of creative work at ISU. BR&S is a physical and portable manifestation of student artistic endeavors.
Is there an identifying moment where you knew you had a pronounced positive impact upon a student? I think you would have to ask my students about that one! It’s gratifying when students take a second course with you. What career/life messages do you try to impart upon your students? I’m not sure poets are a great source for career advice. I do hope that my students, after they graduate, continue to have opportunities to explore the arts—see plays, read great books, watch great movies, listen to great music, attend great art exhibitions. My advice for aspiring writers is this: creative writing isn’t going anywhere. Your writing skills will only get stronger as you get older. Make sure, in the meantime, that you have a job and can pay rent and feed yourself. Those things are important. What do you want students to take from their ISU educational experience? One of my professors once remarked that the more time you give literature, the more it will reward that attention. I hope that all ISU students have a chance to lose themselves in a discipline or course of study— because research and writing builds one’s sense of self as well as knowledge.
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Photo by Chris Gabettas
Is there an identifying moment where you knew you had a pronounced positive impact upon a student? I hope I’m making a difference. I think I have. Several of my basketball players have gone on to lead successful, productive lives. And more recently, many of our athletic administration students here at ISU have secured some pretty impressive sports management positions throughout the Northwest and the United States. I think we’re helping to mold and develop good productive citizens.
Howard Gauthier Assistant Professor Sport Science and Physical Education College of Education ISU-Meridian Health Science Center What inspired you to enter higher education? I wanted to coach college basketball since I was 12 years old. I had some outstanding coaches and mentors who helped me to believe in myself and helped me to succeed. These coaches and mentors inspired me to coach college basketball and to make a difference in the lives of young people. What inspired you to be a university professor? After 25 years as a coach and administrator within college athletics, it was time for me to take my experiences and turn to the classroom where I could help others to reach for their dreams of becoming coaches and athletic administrators. What has teaching taught you about yourself? That I want to make a difference in the lives of young people. Why teach in a university setting? I’ve always wanted to coach and teach at the college level. When I was 12 years old, I had the opportunity to attend a summer basketball camp where college coaches inspired me and made me believe in myself. They helped me to understand that I can succeed in life and that this would begin through working hard at what I loved to do, being a good student, going to college, and striving to be my best. This has been my calling in life . . . to help young people to learn, to grow, and to succeed with strong values.
What is the most difficult aspect of teaching? Teaching is extremely rewarding, but the greatest challenge for most faculty members in sports management is staying current with the fast-paced and quickly changing landscape within college sports. This is both exciting and a great challenge.
If you weren’t a university professor what do you think you would be doing? I’d either be an athletic director or a basketball coach at a four-year college somewhere.
What career/life messages do you try to impart upon your students? Work hard in life, follow your dreams and passions, and make a difference in the lives of others.
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Dr. Blaine Nisson
of new jobs and millions in new earnings given the ripple effect of the winemaking program at the college. On January 20, 2012, the first event of the opening of the building was held for college faculty, staff and administration.
EDUCATION: Bachelor of Arts in marketing, Idaho State University, 1973 Masters in Education, Idaho State University, 1977 Doctorate in Education Oregon State University, 2003 PROFESSION: Retired as President of Umpqua Community College, Roseburg, Oregon. Currently serves on ISU Alumni Board of Directors. HOBBIES: Golf, camera club, computer club, hiking club, pickle ball, competitive shuffleboard. Recently completed nine classes through the University of Arizona’s Lifelong Learning Program. LATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT: Earlier this year, Umpqua Community College named their wine library in honor of Dr. Nisson. His visionary leadership was instrumental in helping to develop the local wine industry. The genesis for developing local wines began when local winemakers approached him and outlined how the local economy would benefit from a source of highly-trained workers and a place for continuing education in the craft of wine making. Dr. Nisson immediately realized what an economic boon this could be to southwestern Oregon and agreed to support the initiative on one condition: he got the winemakers to agree to support the project as equal partners. And so the Southwestern Wine Institute was born. Dr. Nisson believed that by establishing such a program, broadbased business and economic vitality would result in the growth of a hospitality industry, complete with four-star hotels and restaurants. He had seen similar economic gains occur in southeastern Washington when a similar program was launched. Dr. Nisson commissioned an economic impact study, which supported his belief that the Umpqua wine region could produce thousands
Charlotte Fire Affects ISU Within hours after the Charlotte Fire broke out on June 28 in Pocatello’s Mink Creek area – and eventually burned 66 homes – Idaho State University was offering help. And the University continues to do so for fire victims belonging to the ISU and greater communities. By 5 p.m. the day the fires erupted, the American Red Cross had begun setting up an emergency shelter for evacuees in ISU’s Holt Arena. That shelter remained open until 4 p.m. Saturday, June 30, when it was moved to the Clarion Inn. “ISU’s response was absolutely phenomenal,” said Sue Robinson, Chief Executive Officer, American Red Cross of Greater Idaho, who oversaw emergency operations for the fire. “All the way around, from public safety to facilities services, every department we interacted with was very helpful and supportive. The space was great, the staff was great, and overall we couldn’t have been more pleased with the response. We look forward to continuing partnership with ISU.” The emergency shelter provided a variety of services to evacuees, from providing a place to sleep or to get a meal, to providing crisis counseling. ISU facilities, public safety,
WHY I DO WHAT I DO: “I was a first-generation college student. There were many people in my life, my parents, teachers, etc. who provided the support and encouragement I needed to fulfill my education. In the process, I realized I could make the same type of difference in a student’s life and in so doing, build a stronger community. In retrospect I look back at the nearly four decades at the programs and services we were able to institute in the places I served and take great satisfaction from the difference it made in so many lives.” ISU RECOLLECTION: “I look back with great fondness and appreciation for the encouragement and help provided by ISU’s faculty and staff. They provided the guidance which allowed me to be successful and helped to form my beliefs. I fondly remember people such as Earl Pond, Dean Kelley, Art Lloyd, Tom Edger, Bill Bartz and Bud Davis, to name but a few.” ISU EXPERIENCE: “I served as ASISU president from 1972-73. That experience expanded my vision of what could and should be. As the first in my family to graduate from college, I can’t express how truly fortunate I was to start my career at Idaho State University.” WORDS OF WISDOM: “Never let anyone determine your goals and your future or let the lack of resources deter you.”
housing and event personnel, as well as student and staff volunteers, assisted aroundthe-clock, pitching in to help. ISU Public Safety provided 24-hour security, and its personnel also helped set up cots, distribute food and offer any other assistance it could. “A lot of my people came in from their vacations or outside of their normal shifts and helped out in any way they could,” said Stephen Chatterton, director of ISU Public Safety. “A group of 13 or 14 students just spontaneously came up there and were a great help, too.” Holt Arena staff worked from beginning to end at the emergency shelter, too. “We basically turned Holt Arena into a shelter area first thing on Thursday night,” said George Casper, ISU events director. “We helped them set up cots, tables, chairs and cooler space. As the day went on we assisted them with anything they needed.” Idaho State University President Arthur C. Vailas formed the ISU Charlotte Fire Task Force to continue offering support to members of the ISU community and greater Pocatello community affected by the fire. “I am proud of the way ISU stepped up
to help the community initially deal with this catastrophe,” Vailas said. “We will continue to support the greater Pocatello community in any way we can to help heal from these tragic fires.” A particular focus of the task force was helping those of the ISU community –– faculty, staff, students, emeritus faculty and retirees – who have been affected. According to a report prepared by the ISU Office of Human Resources, of the 66 homes that reported burned, about 20 belonged to members of the extended ISU community. Many others were affected less severely. As community members coped with the loss and trauma in response to the Charlotte fire, the ISU Department of Counseling and the ISU Counseling and Testing Center offered free counseling. The task force formed a pool of University volunteers to assist evacuees and fire victims in a wide assortment of projects. ISU worked with other public, volunteer and private entities such as the American Red Cross, United Way and city, state and county governments committed to helping the community recover from the fire.
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‘Spirit of Giving’ Blooms Around Campus ISU Photographic Services/Susan Duncan
The Wheatley family has always embodied a spirit of giving. Jack Wheatley doesn’t remember it any other way. Growing up in the small agricultural community of Robin, Idaho in Marsh Valley as the youngest of five children, he remembers that everyone felt that way. If someone needed help putting up hay, the neighbors came together. They helped each other with any needs. “Everybody helped everyone,” he says. “It was just something you did.” It is that sort of work ethic and community service Wheatley hopes to instill and support in the students who receive help through his scholarship program and other gifts to the University. The real estate developer has donated nearly $1 million to Idaho State University, including a scholarship for students from the Marsh Valley area, and funding for a long-term project for campus wide beautification, especially planting trees. He has also made generous gifts to the United States Military Academy, Stanford University and Brigham Young University. “When we observe a need, we try to fill it,” Wheatley said. “We don’t need to be asked.” The funding for campus beautification includes many trees, enhanced walkways and a campus more conducive to pedestrians. He and Mary Lois, his wife of 60 years, have worked with Brigham Young University on campus beautification for 40 years, helping to plant thousands of trees. His son, Charles, is working with him to continue the tradition at Idaho State University. “We think that beauty and excellence go together,” Jack said. Mary Lois is a trained artist and has inspired Jack to put beauty in all aspects of his projects. The Wheatleys were instrumental in the creation of the Museum of Art at Brigham Young University to help students there develop the same appreciation for excellence and beauty. “The best money I every spent.” Jack says, “is on the purchase of the Carl Bloch painting, Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda for BYU.” Jack says the ISU beautification project has been enjoyable in part because of the cooperative Idaho State University employees at Facilities Services, who share the vision to do more for our campus. He has also enjoyed his work with President Arthur Vailas and First Lady Dr. Laura Vailas. “They have an unusual dedication to the University,” Jack said. “It’s a passion for them. It’s been a pleasure working with them.”
Jack and Charles Wheatley ride on a campus tour with (left to right) Laura Vailas, Dennis Ketterman, Chris Wagner, Scott Turner, Robin Colling, Kent Tingey and Joseph Han. Laura Vailas has enjoyed working with the Wheatleys on many projects. “Jack understands that a beautiful and welcoming campus environment leaves a lasting impression on those who visit, live and work at a university,” she said. “The Wheatley family’s vision and generosity will impact Idaho State University immediately and forever.” Jack Wheatley’s affinity for Idaho State University dates back to 1941, when his family moved to Pocatello so Jack could attend high school during the war. In 1945, Jack attended Idaho State University for one year before a professor recommended him for an appointment to West Point, where he graduated in 1950. Immediately following his graduation, he served his country in the Korean War. He later worked for many years as a commercial builder and real estate developer in Palo Alto, California. Jack and Mary Lois also have been devoted parents to their six children. “Each of us enjoy getting involved with our parents in the good causes they have endeavored to pursue, and see it as our responsibility to carry on their legacy,” Charles said. Throughout his career, Jack saw service to others as an essential part of his life. He served as city councilman and later mayor of Palo Alto. He has been a passionate supporter of several other charitable organizations including The Hoover Institution and The Tech Museum, both located in California. He and Mary Lois served two
missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Investing in education has always been important to the family. “He’s been blessed,” Charles said. “The more he has given, the more he seems to have the capacity to give, so it makes him want to do more. He’s found much joy as he has been able to help students and others fulfill their dreams.” Jack says he enjoys reading the letters and cards written by those who he has helped. He hopes to give them a sense of the importance of hard work— of the landscaping projects at Idaho State University, 75 percent of the labor will be done by students. Jack wants them to see the benefits of working on a project and seeing the end result. “It’s fun to be a part of something like that,” he said. Vice President for Advancement Kent Tingey says he is grateful for the Wheatley family’s generosity. “The Wheatley family and their extraordinary kindness has been an outstanding addition to this University. They constantly think of and consider ways to help students and others associated with Idaho State University, either through scholarships for our students or making the campus a more beautiful venue and more conducive to teaching, learning, scholarship and recreational activity. Their contributions and personal touch will forever impact Idaho State University.” Emily Frandsen
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Back in Time As Homecoming 2012 draws near, the Idaho State University Magazine staff wanted to give a look back in times gone by. As always, feel free to write us with your favorite campus memories or ideas for story possibilities.
Fall 2012
Football Sept. 8 4:05 p.m. Black Hills State Sept. 29 1:35 p.m. Sac. State Oct. 13 4:05 p.m. UC Davis Nov. 3 4:05 p.m. No. Arizona Nov. 17 4:05 p.m. Weber State Soccer Sept. 28 Sept. 30 Oct. 18 Oct. 20
4 p.m. Southern Utah 1 p.m. No. Arizona 4 p.m. No. Colorado 1 p.m. North Dakota
Volleyball Sept. 14 7 p.m. No. Arizona Sept. 15 7 p.m. Southern Utah Sept. 21 7 p.m. No. Colorado Sept. 22 7 p.m. North Dakota Oct. 3 7 p.m. Weber State Oct. 12 7 p.m. Portland State Oct. 13 8 p.m. Eastern Wash. Nov. 2 7 p.m. Montana Nov. 3 8 p.m. Montana State Nov. 9 7 p.m. Sac. State
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Join in the fun this year!
Thursday, September 27, 2012 Kickoff Celebration Free food, beverages available for purchase. Join other alumni and friends from 6 to 9 p.m. at Pinehurst Nursery and Floral, 4101 Pole Line Road, Pocatello.
Friday, September 28, 2012 President’s Alumni Recognition Dinner The reception will be from 6 to 7 p.m. with dinner to start at 7 p.m. at Red Lion Hotel, 1555 Pocatello Creek Road. Cost is $40 per person. RSVP required. Contact alumni@isu.edu or (208) 282-3755.
Saturday, September 29, 2012 Homecoming Parade Parade starts at 10 a.m. on the corner of East Center Street and 1st Avenue and ends at Holt Arena.
Fall 2012
Patrician Photography, LLC. Used with permission.
Alumnus Honored Through a Team Name
Saturday, September 29, 2012 Pre-Game Tailgate Immediately following the Homecoming Parade in the Holt Arena parking lot. Homecoming Football Game The Bengals kickoff against Sacramento State at 1:30 p.m. in Holt Arena. For tickets contact Holt Arena ticket office (208) 282-FANS.
ISU Basketball has an East Coast Connetion. Guy and Jim Francfort have decided to honor a friend with the selection of their team name, Idaho State. The following is Guy’s explanation. At first glance it might seem that the selection of Idaho State as a college team name for a third-grade boy’s basketball team in Readington, NJ was done as a comedic gesture for my brother, Jim Francfort, who is a graduate of ISU and currently serves on the Alumni Board of Directors. As league director, I had the first choice of team names and emailed the other five coaches and informed them that Idaho State was no longer available. Other names had been taken as well — Duke, North Carolina, Kansas and Notre Dame. Our selection of ISU was done in homage to a personal friend who may not be the most famous, but is certainly one of the most honorable and noble of all of the ISU graduates. DeWayne Cruse was sent to live with his brother in Billings, Mont. in 1960 while in high school, by his father, a laid-off coal worker from Pennsylvania. After moving to Mountain Home when his brother was transferred, at 6’8” he became a highly recruited high school basketball star, but chose to play college basketball for ISU. Cruse was selected by the L.A. Lakers in the seventh round upon graduating and was the last player to be cut. He returned east
and spent six years playing in the EBA. After the 1971 season, Cruse took a job as director of the Franklin Township Housing Authority in Somerset County, NJ, where he remained for 32 years. Cruse and his wife Carol started a non-profit program called Kid’s Café Parkside Achievement Program that provided meals to underprivileged children and options beyond living in poverty. The program’s motto was “Making a Way out of No Way,” and Cruse showed them what was possible. Because of his size and the way he always conducted himself as a gentleman, he demanded respect and demanded that the kids that came through the program respect themselves as well. All the money for the program either came out of his own pocket or from funds he and the participants were able to raise. An adamant believer in higher education, he helped as many as 100 kids go to college, many whose parents and society would have written off if it weren’t for Cruse. The selection of Idaho State was deliberate and no joke. I hope to be able to teach my third graders to become the man that DeWayne was off the court. If they grow to be 6’8” and get drafted by the Lakers, that will be OK too. Guy Francfort and K.C. Felt, alumni director
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Thanks for your support! Vivid Concepts Magazine, proud publisher of the Pocatello Magazine and The Bannock Alternative, would like to thank ISU and ISU alumni for their continuing support of a locally owned alternative media outlet in Southeast Idaho.
Vivid Concepts Magazine 250 S. Main St. • Pocatello, ID 83204 • 208.233.2485
Fall 2012
For a complete list of Trackings, visit www.isu.edu/magazine Editor’s note: Send Trackings information to the Office of Alumni Relations, Idaho State University, 921 S. 8th Ave., Stop 8033, Pocatello, ID 83209-8033; or email to alumni@isu.edu; or fax to (208) 282-2541; or call (208) 282-3755 locally, or toll-free (800) 933-4781.
Col. Garth Holmes, ’60, BS Pharmacy — Col. Garth Holmes received the National Eagle Scout Outstanding Scout Award for work with the Boy Scouts, community, country and world. Daniel Christopher, ’71, MBA — Daniel Christopher is one of three finalists for the Denver District Court bench. He is currently General Counsel for ClearChoice Management Services Company, a position he has held since 2005. He also has experience in criminal prosecution, administrative hearings before state and county agencies. He attended the University of Colorado, Boulder where he obtained his undergraduate degree in 1969 prior to his MBA from Idaho State University. He obtained his juris doctorate from University of Denver School of Law in 1974. Frederick James Walker, ‘71, MPE – Athletic Administration – former College of Southern Idaho head baseball coach Jim “Skip” Walker was inducted into the American Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in January. Walker coached the Golden Eagle baseball team from 1975 until 2005. Frontier Field was officially named James F. “Skip” Walker Baseball Field in 2003. Retiring from head coaching duties in 2004, Walker continues to be a part of CSI baseball as an assistant coach. Jim D. Pappas, ’74, BA Political Science – The 9th Circuit has added another three years to the term of the judge who leads the 9th Circuit’s Bankruptcy Appellate Panel. Judge Jim Pappas of Boise, was first appointed to the panel in 2005, and has served as its chief judge since 2010. The new term with the BAP began Aug. 28. Pappas, 60, was born in Pocatello and received his bachelor’s degree in political science from Idaho State University in 1974. He graduated from the University of Idaho with his law degree in 1977, serving as editor-in-chief of the Idaho Law Review in his last year. Terry Gestrin, ’74, BBA Finance — Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter appointed former valley county commissioner Terry Gestrin, a Donnelly businessman, to complete the final four months of Ken Roberts’ unexpired term in the Idaho House of Representatives. Gestrin and his wife Sheri own and operate Long Valley Farm Service. Charles M. “Skip” Protko, ‘77, MPE, Athletic Administration — Schumacher Group has hired Skip Protko as the company’s first-ever chief human resources officer. Previously, he was the vice president and chief human resources officer for the plant services division of Shaw, Stone & Webster in Baton Rouge. Protko has bachelor’s degrees in sociology and education from Kentucky Wesleyan College in addition to his MPE at Idaho State University. He is also a Six Sigma Green Belt, a distinguished accomplishment in human resources.
Bradley Lish, ’80, BBA Finance has joined D.L. Evans Bank’s West State Street branch in Boise as a commercial loan officer. Lish has more than 30 years of experience in banking. He earned his bachelor’s degree in finance from Idaho State University. He is involved with Boy Scouts of America and serves as president of the board for Neighborhood Housing Services. Larry Wetzel, ’85, BS Interdisciplinary Engineering; ’86, MS, has earned the Nuclear Science and Engineering, College of Science & Engineering - recently received the Special Heritage Club Award from the American Falls Education Foundation in recognition of his outstanding support and contributions to the students of American Falls. Wetzel is an advisory engineer with Babcock & Wilcox Nuclear Operations Group in Lynchburg, Virginia. Vincent Gonsalves, ’88, BS Secondary Ed/Bio Science and Biology, ’92 MS Physical Therapy - recently completed transitional DPT from Shenandoah University in August 2011. He is director of physical therapy at Work and Wellness Physical Therapy in Tigard Oregon. He also works with physical therapy interns as an advanced clinical instructor, coaches youth lacrosse and competes as a member of the Oregon Bike Racing Association.
Claudia Nicholas, ’91 BA Elementary Ed - sang professionally for 20 years and has been on three tours with the USO, is the seventh holder of the Ms. Senior Mesquite crown, according to Mary Nelson, pageant chair for publicity and marketing. She is married and also studied applied music at Brigham Young University. Marlo DeLange, ’92, BBA Finance - has been named a principal with Vandeberg, Johnson and Gandara, LLP with offices in Tacoma and Seattle, Wash. She obtained her juris doctorate from Seattle University School of Law in 1997 and joined the firm in 2004. Jennifer Wheeler, ’94, BA; ‘94, BBA – was elected president of the board of directors for the Idaho Nonprofit Center, a statewide nonprofit association dedicated to strengthening Idaho nonprofits. Wheeler has also been appointed interim executive director of alumni relations at Boise State University. She has 20 years of alumni relations experience and has been senior associate director of alumni relations at Boise State since 2007. Mark E. Amaral, ’94, MPE Athletic Admin.- is the associate head basketball coach at Pepperdine University and this past season completed his 20th season of coaching at the collegiate
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level. He has lived in Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Washington and California twice. He has been married for 15 years to the former Christy Mueller (1995 ISU grad) for 15 years, and the couple has two sons. Alice Schenk, ’97 MHE Health Education/NonTeaching ED-ran the 2012 Sawtooth Relay Solo, covering the 61.9 miles from Stanley to Ketchum in 12:50.40 and winning the Solo Athlete Category overall. Schenk broke the existing women’s record of 14:11.27 set by Kedron Holland in 2006. Schenk currently teaches health and fitness classes for the College of Southern Idaho.
Carrie Varga, ’99, BA Elementary Education – as a fifth grade teacher, Varga was one of 10 teachers in Wyoming to receive the Arch Coal award. In addition to her bachelor’s degree at Idaho State University she has a master’s degree from the University of Connecticut, Storrs and an English Language Learners endorsement through the University of Wyoming. Brian T. Deatherage, ‘01, BS Secondary Ed - has been hired as head coach of the Kuna High School boy’s basketball team. Deatherage returns to the sidelines four years after stepping down at Middleton High 2004 to 2008 and leading them to a championship.
Major in Spirit! 123 South Main Street in Pocatello Tuesday-Friday 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturdays 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
Eric Pierce, ’07, BS Zoology - obtained his optometry degree from the Southern College of Optometry in Memphis, Tennessee, graduating in May 2012. Pierce shadowed Dr. Zarybnisky for two years as well as getting involved with medical interpretation for Spanish speaking patients. Pierce will begin working at the Eye Care Center Aug. 1 when he takes over from the retiring Zarybnisky. Todd T. Itami, ’08, BA General Studies, Sociology - Student Chapter of the Year Chicago’s Federalist Society is honored for its programs, speakers, and professionalism. Itami serves as one of the chapter officers. The student chapter has about 75 members and hosts at least one speaker a week, said Todd Itami, ’13, is an officer. Connie Harrison, ’11, BA Anthropology - after nearly a decade scavenging the ruins of Ireland, Connie Harrison opened Three Rivers Consignment and Collectables in downtown Longview, Wash. designed for scavengers of unique items. Harrison was a former archaeology lab technician at Idaho State University. Harrison made multiple trips to England and Ireland to study old artifacts from the Bronze Age. Slim “Bones” Millien, ’06 - played for the Bengals for the 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons. Millien now plays for the Harlem Globetrotters. While at Idaho State he averaged over 13 points per game. In the 2005-06 season he led the team with 15.5 points per game and set a school record with 93 blocked shots.
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